Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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468. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of schools that have requested training on trauma-informed practices in 2020, 2021 and to date in 2022; and the number of schools that received this training from a psychologist to date. [17684/22]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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NEPS recognises the importance of whole-school, compassionate and trauma-informed approaches in building safe and connected schools and trauma informed practice is part of the normal day to day work of the educational psychologists. Trauma informed approaches may form part of case work or part of the support and development work and NEPS psychologists work to build teacher capacity in this area. NEPS’ Support and Development work involves the provision of applied psychology services for teachers and school communities to build and maximise their capacity to respond to the needs of all students and those with particular needs. This includes trauma informed education. These professional learning activities may include the provision of training/formal professional learning opportunities including training in the delivery of evidence-informed approaches and early intervention, and working with school communities to develop supportive school structures and processes. These activities are not recorded in a format that would allow the precise data sought by the Deputy to be reported.

NEPS psychologists have engaged in extensive national training in the area of trauma in recent years to inform their practice and the development of professional learning opportunities for school staff. In order to have a greater reach to schools, NEPS has developed a series of Wellbeing and Resilience in Schools webinars, exploring the use of whole-school, compassionate and trauma-informed approaches to build safe and connected schools drawing on the existing practice of psychologists in this area.

The “Stress Factor” the first webinar in the series for all school staff will be available to all primary and post primary schools after Easter in collaboration with the Education Centre network. Officials in NEPS and in the I.T section of the Department are working to launch this webinar on the new Learning Management System (LMS) of the Department. Once launched numbers of teachers accessing this professional learning programme will be logged and monitored.